He wanted to live.
Just wanted to live.
Maybe because he was dying in some corner where nobody recognized him, Emperor or not, he wanted to live. He wanted a quiet life.
It was then that he realized.
Even when nothing ended, one would experience such thoughts.
In the end, to survive, one had to kill those who wanted to kill others.
“… right.”
That was it.
The next thing he remembered was a red scene. He killed everything that annoyed him, and he removed everyone in his way. He didn’t know what was wrong anymore. He didn’t even know that his way of life was wrong, probably because he only saw the bad in humanity. He didn’t want to do anything, but the fact that everyone wished him dead had enraged him.
It was only when there was no one else to stop him did he feel at ease.
All that remained was his hate for himself.
He could do everything on his own, but he was never happy. Well, rather, the word happiness only made him feel emptier.
He wasn’t happy about anything.
As his satisfactions and dreams ceased, nothing made sense to him anymore. Even when the world bowed before him.
Everything he had in his hand was something he had never hoped for.
He took it because it was his, but there was nothing significant about it.
It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that his life was monochromatic. It was his little girl who filled him with colors.
“Is it really my time to die?”
Naturally, the first person who came to his mind was his daughter.
Back then, she was weird and he didn’t want to think of her as a human.
She was so small and delicate. Caitel never said it out loud, but she intrigued him. Until that time, he had killed all the babies without even touching them.
He always thought that a kid would end up tying him down and be a burden to him.
Honestly, even before having kids, he thought mothers were only trying to get something out of him using their children.
He felt sorry for the kids and tried to tolerate the concubines’ wishes to some extent.
But at some point, it exceeded his patience.
Without another thought, Caitel drew his sword, and before knowing it, he had already cut down every child in the palace, and he had no intention of quitting either. It was annoying to have kids and he didn’t give a second thought about them.
It was never difficult for Caitel to order his child to be killed, probably because he didn’t have a bond with them. The women who were caught in the war began to pile up, and before he even knew it, a woman from an unknown country conceived another one of his children.
A concubine whose name was never known to the world.
Ariadna’s mother.
She had requested relentlessly to allow her to look after her own child and that she wanted nothing else from Caitel.
He still remembered the woman’s face, biting her lip with anger at the execution order if she wouldn’t surrender her child. Her green eyes were full of hate for Caitel, eyes which never left his mind, but the eyes of the child were crimson, resembling his.
Was that why it changed? His intent to kill suddenly vanished.
He didn’t want to lose to a foolish woman who died after giving birth to a child, so he tried to kill the child with his own hands. Strangely, when he looked at the babe, he never knew that he would change, his intent to kill disappeared as if it never existed.
It could have been on a whim.
But with that one choice, everything in his life had changed.
‘Dad!’